'Does he talk?' said Gallen, and flashed her new, sharp face back to me. 'Do you talk?' she asked the walrus. 'Grrumph!' she said. And the walrus, an old hand at doing favors for fish, rolled his great bulging head and belched for her.
'BROP!' said the walrus.
'He talked!'Gallen cried.
And said more than I have to say, I thought.
I felt the notebook go clammy against my stomach; when I moved, it scraped me. The pages of zoo watches pressed against me. It was as if I'd eaten a whole magazine; and the paper, in shreds, was wadded in my belly.
'Oh!' said Gallen - a general statement, while looking around for what came next.
Hannes Graff, I thought, please do get rid of your stomach disorder. This zoo is a place to enjoy. Nothing more.
Not ten feet away from me was an iron litter basket. I rapped my belly with my knuckles. I took a light step, my first. Then something happened with the giraffe.
He began to canter; he loped along, his great neck arching his head over the top of the storm fence like a live antenna, a kind of radar.
My God, he's recognized me, I thought.
'What's happening?' said Gallen.
The giraffe clattered excitedly. The walrus raised his head up above the rim of the pool; for just a second, he held his mass erect and goggled at me. I heard nearby skitters from pens and cages throughout the zoo. My presence, and my step toward the litter basket, was passed along the animals' grapevine. From half a zoo away, I heard the bar-slamming, roaring Asiatic Black Bear.
'What's happening?' Gallen said again.
'Something must have startled one of them,' I answered, defeated.
'BROP!' said the walrus, rising again.
BROP yourself, I thought.
'BROP!' he repeated, his throbbing neck straining to keep himself up - and in sight of me. While the great cantering giraffe zoomed his neck in on me.
'Where's the Biergarten?' said Gallen, so frotting eager.
And down by the Biergarten that my Gallen wanted to see, the terrible Asiatic Black Bear deafened the zoo.
'God, what's that?' said Gallen.
'BROP!' said the endlessly belching walrus. 'That's our terrifying leader. That's who that is.'
The giraffe now transfixed me with his neck. 'How could you?' his radar asked. 'How could you have even considered it?'
'BROP!' said the tiresome walrus. 'Weren't you forgetting O. SCHRUTT?'
Gallen tugged my arm. 'Come on, Graff,' she said.
And as I stumbled, half-blind, toward the Biergarten, I saw again my loon of a soccer mate on my old high-school team. Down the path was the ball, and ahead of it, coming full tilt, the Famous Asiatic Black Bear, who wouldn't allow O. Schrutt to be forgotten, appeared to have a step or two on me; he was going to get to the ball first.
Past the Monkey Complex, then; my eyes were blurred by the frotting bear's speed. I began, low down in my throat: 'Aaii, aaii,' I cried softly, 'Aaaiii!' I screamed.
'Graff!' said Gallen. 'What's the matter with you?'
'Aaaiii! Aaaiii!' wailed a monkey or two, old hands at mimicry.
And Gallen laughed, with all her guards clearly down, even more vulnerable than I'd imagined - to my inevitable surprise.
'I didn't know, Graff,' she said, taking my arm, 'that you knew how to talk to monkeys.'